


Tiny, Too Tiny

by Terra



Category: Invaders, Marvel 616
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-01
Updated: 2010-01-01
Packaged: 2017-10-05 14:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Terra/pseuds/Terra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that's the story of how Bucky got another two weeks of KP duty and how Toro developed a strong aversion to German wine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tiny, Too Tiny

So they’re holed up somewhere in the woods of Uckermark and it’s one month since Bucky turned eighteen. It’ll be two days, at least, before Master Man and the rest get to them, and they’ve just gotta sit tight until then. That’s what they say in the army: hurry up and wait. They’ve got a deck of cards, sure, but it’s nothing they can use to really whittle at the time.

“We oughta do something else, something with a kick to it,” he says, running his mental fingers through the possibilities. “I know! Let’s steal Subby’s extra panties.”

“Let’s not,” Toro responds. “Can’t we just play checkers or something? Poker?”

“Nope. This is a brilliant. Much better than the time with the shaving cream.”

“I just don’t understand why you’d try to make him angry. Or anybody angry. It seems like an awful silly thing to do.”

“It’s not about making him angry! I just think it’s funny to see his eyebrows twitch. Y’know, they kinda look like--”

“That’s exactly the same thing as making him angry on purpose.” Toro puts on a serious expression.

“Fine, fine, have it your way.” Bucky throws his hands up in surrender. “I’m not sure what I did to draw a team full of teetotaling no-fun-iks, but I can tell when a thing just ain’t gonna happen.” He pauses. “Even if it _should_.”

“Aw hang,” Toro says, fishing a bottle of _Spätburgunder_ out of his sack. “I might be a no-fun-ik, but I’m not a _teetotaling_ no-fun-ik.” There’s a good long look at the wine, and then he adds, “But I don’t think no-fun-ik is a proper word.”

“Where’d you get a hold of that?” It’s not a spectacular vintage, 1937, but some quick arithmetic says there’s enough there for the both of them. “This isn’t like you at all!”

“Someone put it in my bag by mistake, and we were fifty miles from camp before I noticed,” Toro says sheepishly. “But this way I reckon checkers’ll be a bit more interesting.” He pulls out the cork, he’s not sure how, and takes a quick swig of it. It burns his throat in all the ways the rest of him can’t.

***

Sometime later in the night Bucky’s looking over maps as best he can in the lamplight, when in stumbles Toro, his face fractured up strange. There’s something green and tiny—_too_ tiny—glinting in his hands.

“Holy shit, Raymond, I thought you’d just gone to the john! How soused _are_ you?”

“I got a bit lost on the way, that’s all. No harm in that.”

And in walked Subby, right at that moment, because that’s just the way these stories go.

“I know one of you ungrateful air-breathers has been in my quarters this night. And I do _not_ appreciate invasions of my privacy.” Namor stares a long time at Toro, eyebrows vibrating so fast you’d think that maybe they would buzz.

Bucky steps behind Toro and then in front of him, grabbing the panties and stuffing them into his pockets, quiet so that Subby doesn’t notice. “Well gee, I’m sorry, Namor, I just got a bit lost.”

“Indeed,” Namor says, making a face like a twisted up pretzel. “A bit lost.” He can smell the alcohol on him, the stuff Bucky spilled on himself when Namor walked in to distract away from the wine on Toro’s breath. “I will be speaking to Rogers about this in the morning.” And then he leaves as pompously as he came, if that’s possible, which for Namor, it probably is.

“Why’d you do that? You don’t have to cover for me!”

‘Well, no, I don’t gotta, but I was the one who dragged you into it. And if he’d found out you had done it, he’d just blame Jim, and you know how those two get. Besides, I know you, you’d’ve confessed the whole thing and apologized and all that nonsense. This way, we get to keep _these_, and who knows what kind of possibilities this opens for us in the future. Y’see, Tom, I’m an optimist, and I think it’s important that a man capitalize on the hand that life deals him…” Toro stopped listening about this far into the speech, but you can rest assured that Bucky kept talking for at least another minute.

And that's the story of how Bucky got another two weeks of KP duty and how Toro developed a strong aversion to German wine.


End file.
